and mob murder victims. (Jimmy Hoffa is
persistently rumored to be buried under the
end zone in Giants Stadium, a bit like St. Peter
under the altar at the Vatican.) But the Hack
ensack River was placid and lovely. Terns kept
me company, cocking their heads down every
few seconds to scout for fish and occasionally
plunging into the water to catch one. I found
I could travel for hours and never see another
boat, and I began to wonder where all the fish
ermen and birders had gone.
One day I put the question to Don Smith,
the former HMDC naturalist, who grew up
hunting and trapping muskrat in the mead
ows. We were out at the Kearny Marsh, which
is a case study in how weird the Meadowlands
habitat can be. Back in the 1960s, Smith said,
the Jersey Turnpike got built at the far end
of the marsh. Then a culvert underneath it
became clogged and cut off the tidal flow of salt
water. The Kearny Marsh promptly blossomed
into one of the richest freshwater wetlands in
the state. Black-crowned night herons still have
a rookery there and perch on the shore looking
professorial. Moorhens skitter along the mud
flats with their bumpy ostrich trot.
Smith sometimes leads tour groups out
here to look for least bitterns and other rare
birds. I asked him why the HMDC hadn't
done more to get people out into places like
this. "We want people to use it... but on a
controlled basis," he said. "You wouldn't want
to come out here and see wall-to-wall canoes."
At that moment, there wasn't a canoe in sight.
The HMDC likes to boast that it has built
numerous parks in the Meadowlands. But
Snipes Park in Secaucus seemed to me to
epitomize the agency's approach: It was
unmarked and accessible by way of a mall
parking lot. I thought about a proverb that
an HMDC educator used to quote: "In the
end we will conserve only what we love. We
love only what we understand. We will under
stand only what we are taught." It seemed as
if the revitalized Meadowlands were being
hoarded up as the HMDC's secret.
M YLAST DAY in the Meadowlands I
went canoeing with the new HMDC
naturalist, John Quinn, who has
written a book about the Meadow
lands called Fields of Sun and Grass. Quinn, a
placid, pipe-smoking 60-year-old, spent much
Close enough to the turn
pike to hear the traffic's
rumble, duck hunter Mike
Lawn sits in his boat and
waitsfor birds at Saw Mill
Creek Wildlife Manage
ment Area, one offew
places in the Meadow
lands where spartinahas
returnedin force. Behind
him the World Trade
Center reflects the evening
sun. Lawn has hunted
here for a decade. "This is
a pristine marsh, and it's
in the shadow ofskyscrap
ers and one of the world's
busiest corridors,"he says.
"It's a surprise."
of his childhood bushwhacking out into a
northern spur of the Meadowlands called
Overpeck Creek. Back then the marsh at the
end of Brinkerhoff Street was still a magical
place for a kid to invent wilderness treks.
Quinn discovered marsh hawks and mum
michogs there. Then, in the 1960s, a county
landfill and the New Jersey Turnpike both
came to Overpeck. "They raced down this
valley like a flying panzer division," he said.
"It was devastating. You'd see them landfill
ing through the nests of herons and egrets
and gallinules." In a few years the valley was
buried under 15 feet of garbage.
We pushed out into the creek toward the
opposite shore, where the glass towers of an
office park now stand. The banks of the creek
were covered in ailanthus trees and showy
pink mallow flowers. "It looks almost tropi
cal," Quinn said, with the barest hint of irony.
"Ailanthus means tree of heaven. So that's
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, FEBRUARY 2001